SPEED Sees Early Ratings Growth

SPEED rolls into its live and exclusive coverage of the Gatorade Duel at Daytona (Thursday at 2 p.m. ET) and the season opener of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series (Friday at 7:30 p.m. ET) coming off a weekend that delivered double-digit Nielsen ratings growth over a year ago.

Led by NASCAR RaceDay, with a Nielsen Household Rating of 1.53 (1,101,000 households), five SPEED programs scored a Nielsen mark of “1" or better on Saturday. NASCAR RaceDay was up 17 percent from a year ago, the ARCA RE/MAX Series race was up 16 percent (1.46 vs. 1.26), NASCAR Sprint Cup Series practice was up 8 percent (1.11 vs. 1.03) and two episodes of NASCAR Live! were up 18 percent and 26 percent respectively.

“We came into the 2008 season totally fired up," said SPEED President Hunter Nickell. “SPEED showed up ready to work early in January for the first NASCAR test sessions and we will keep the momentum going throughout the season, through our exclusive coverage of the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race in May and all the way to Homestead in November."

SPEED’s weekend programming also delivered growth with younger audiences. From 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET, out of 70 networks, SPEED was the No. 2 rated network with Men 18-49, falling in behind TNT.